


Continuing Travels of Cophine, Part 4

by ce_ucumatli (Locked_Tomb_Cabbage)



Series: Continuing Travels of Cophine [4]
Category: Orphan Black (TV)
Genre: F/F, Oral Sex, Paris - Freeform, Teasing, but also mentions of tasty things, genitalia, hospital flashback, like noodle dishes, like pus, mentions of disgusting things
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-31
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:34:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 19,476
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22054885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Locked_Tomb_Cabbage/pseuds/ce_ucumatli
Summary: Picks up pretty much right where Part 3 left off.
Relationships: Delphine Cormier/Cosima Niehaus
Series: Continuing Travels of Cophine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/931965
Comments: 80
Kudos: 206





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Hope this is worth the wait!

Cosima stared up into the dark hotel room, completely naked and wide awake. Both of those were planned states of being; her stillness, however, was not. She’d sort of planned on doing a lot more fucking right about now. Instead, Delphine snored into her shoulder, her right arm and leg wrapped around Cosima's body and her hair tickling the side of Cosima's breast. Very delicately, Cosima reached over with her one free hand and tucked the offending strands behind Delphine's ear. Then she kissed her hairline and breathed in Delphine’s scent. 

“Sleepyhead,” she whispered.

Delphine slept on. She'd passed out almost instantly upon assuming this position, not stirring when Cosima shifted underneath her or even when a car accident outside made Cosima jerk in surprise. Normally, Cosima might lean out the window to see if everyone was okay, but tonight the German authorities could deal with that car accident, however severe or superficial it might be. Cosima went nowhere.

It wasn’t easy keeping still, not with Delphine’s skin on hers and Delphine’s knee close enough to Cosima’s groin to make it impossible to forget how horny she was, hornier than she had any right to be while Delphine slept so deeply, and when Delphine so desperately needed her sleep. For fuck’s sake, she'd practically fallen asleep in the taxi and then in the shower, after running all over Syria and Lebanon to save the lives of Ledas and their loved ones.

Cosima could wait a few more hours. 

Drool dampened the skin around Cosima's armpit, and she smiled, still amused that a woman as classy and beautiful as Delphine Cormier drooled in her sleep.

In the morning, or maybe the afternoon or evening, they could fuck each other's brains out, give each other enough orgasms to wash away the past several weeks of distance and longing. But for now, Delphine slept, and Cosima held her, and that was more than enough.

* * *  
* * *

Cosima mumbled in her sleep when Delphine extracted herself from the bed and from her embrace, as early morning sunlight peered in through the curtains.

“Maybe?” Cosima said, or possibly “Baby?” It was hard to tell, but Delphine had to pee, so she didn’t stick around to find out. She sat for some time in the spacious hotel bathroom, letting reality trickle in. She’d dreamt of huge water wheels and sandstorms devouring cities, and of faceless men with semi-automatic rifles breathing down her neck as she dilated Cosima’s cervix and Cosima silently cried. 

She shook her head and flushed the toilet. Her demons retreated into the dark recesses of her mind, vanquished for the moment by the sight of Cosima’s makeup bag on the counter and both of their clothes from yesterday piled up in the corner. 

When she shuffled back into the main room, Cosima lay on her stomach, one arm wrapped around the pillow that she'd pulled under her face. She stayed in that position while Delphine opened her own suitcase, wincing at the sound of the zipper, and pulled on her most comfortable lounging clothes. Cosima did not move when Delphine accidentally knocked one of Cosima’s notebooks off the table while she put her shoes on, or when Delphine forgot how bright her cell phone was and nearly burned out her own corneas checking the time.

It was 7:33.

Delphine sat by the window, too awake to return to Cosima’s side under the covers, and peered out at the city behind the curtains. It wasn’t the same view she was used to, not the blank slate gray 1980s architecture she’d seen with Topside. Cosima selected a hotel with a view of the river, in walking distance to the main train station. Birds flew by and people jogged along the water’s edge.

“Delphine?”

“Oui?” Delphine stepped over to Cosima, but Cosima said nothing more. She breathed as deeply as she had before, and her face twitched in dreams. 

“Shh…” Delphine crouched down beside the bed and lay her hand gently on Cosima’s shoulder, massaging the firm muscle under soft skin. “It’s okay. I’m right here.” 

In a moment, the twitching stopped, but Cosima slumbered on, shifting slightly. Delphine removed her hand and went back to the window to watch Frankfurt waking up. The view was different, but she recognized the bridge crossing the Main. She’d crossed the bridge several times herself in a Topside limo. On two of those trips, Mehmet had ignored Topside’s orders, stopped the car at his friend’s kebab shop, and purchased a hot, fresh yufka kebab for her. 

Her stomach growled and pushed the demons back into their corners. She found the room key Cosima had put near the TV last night, and then she slipped out into the hallway, leaving Cosima to her dreams. 

Fifteen minutes later she returned, a breakfast tray delicately balanced on an arm that never worked as a waitress, laden with a little bit of everything from the buffet downstairs: several brötchen with butter, jam, and Nutella on the side; cold cut cheese and meat; fresh fruit; and coffee. 

When she entered, Cosima sat part way up in the bed, the blanket falling off her shoulder to reveal her breasts and stomach, lined red from sleeping face down all morning. She squinted in Delphine's direction. “Wh'time is it?” she asked.

Delphine set the tray on the table by the window. “I don't know exactly. 8:15 maybe? What time did you fall asleep?”

“I dunno. After midnight sometime. I heard the church bells. You passed out at like 7, though. No wonder you're up and about.” She yawned and stretched her arms up over her head, distracting Delphine from everything else, and then fell sideways onto the bed. “I was sad when you weren't here a few minutes ago. For a sec I thought maybe I'd just dreamed about you coming back.”

“Back?” Delphine asked. She arranged the breakfast things on the table and then smiled down at the adorable woman curled up on the bed, hugging the duvet to her chest. It might have looked like a gesture of modesty, except Cosima's entire right half was visible from head to toe. Delphine kissed her hip and then danced her lips over her skin, and Cosima yawned again. 

“Yeah. Back to me.”

“Well, you didn't dream that. I am very much back with you, and not a moment too soon. Are you hungry?”

“Not yet. I will be soon, but I have to race like a piss horse right now.”

Cosima was more awake than she let on if she was saying things like that. Sleepy Cosima usually put her vulgar expressions in the right order. Delphine tried not to smile too much as she stood and looked down on her again. “And yet you're still in bed.”

“Comfy.”

“If you say so.”

She should be sweet and understanding, and let Cosima stay in bed as long as she wanted. But then, Cosima was naked and adorable, and Delphine had spent six long weeks without her. Six long weeks being solidly professional at every moment without Cosima around to help her let off any steam – without being able to nip at Cosima's earlobes or tickle the bottom of her ass cheeks or steal her favorite pen and watch her looking everywhere for it before slipping it back into her purse. 

“You shouldn’t stay there too long,” Delphine said, running her finger up and down Cosima’s side. It didn’t get the reaction she wanted. Cosima just smiled.

“I’ll get up when I’m ready. You could always join me.”

“Yes, but I’m quite hungry. And you have to pee.”

Cosima groaned an acknowledgement and curled herself tighter against the duvet. Alright, then. Time for a different approach. 

With a glance at Cosima's prone and naked figure, Delphine took a bottle of water and a glass, and sat next to Cosima on the bed. Cosima obviously had not picked up on Delphine's intentions, because she still looked at Delphine with soft flirty eyes. Then Delphine took the stopper from the bottle and slowly poured herself a glass, making eye contact with Cosima as she did so and then taking a noisy drink. 

“Oh, fuck you,” Cosima said, and tumbled out of the bed. From the bathroom, she called out, “You know, sometimes I like to forget how good you are at torturing people into doing what you want.” 

Whatever she said next vanished in the sound of the toilet flushing, but Delphine caught the words “Dyad” and “in charge.” 

Nevertheless, when she returned, she pulled Delphine in for a long kiss, snaking her cold, freshly washed hands up inside Delphine's shirt before pulling it over her head and messing up whatever illusion of a hairstyle Delphine had. Then she swooned, and Delphine caught her before she tipped over.

“Okay, now I'm hungry,” Cosima admitted. “Might not have eaten much last night.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Sitting by the open window on a warm day with the love of her life beside her, Delphine could almost forget that this was Frankfurt at all. Sunlight kissed their faces, and rather than rushing to some meeting or another, Delphine took her time and enjoyed her food. She and Cosima fed each other bits of fruit or bread by hand, and kissed away the jammy crumbs that stuck to cheek and lips. At one point Cosima dropped a piece of Nutella-slathered bread on to Delphine's lap, swearing it was accidental but then, with a cheeky smile, saying “Might as well just take those off, too.”

Six weeks was too long for either of them to maintain good behavior, it seemed.

“Please tell me you don't have any plans for today,” Cosima said, biting her lip as Delphine pulled off her Nutella-stained pants.

Still punchy, Delphine made a big show of thinking about it. She walked over to her shoulder bag, making sure to sway her hips a bit on the way, and pulled out her spiral bound agenda book. She opened it to a random page and pretended to study it, rubbing her chin and shifting her weight from one foot to the other, aware of Cosima's attention focused in the general vicinity of her hips. That was fine. Cosima would be spending a lot of time there soon enough. Tapping her lips, Delphine peered up from her book. “Mmm, yes, actually. I do have plans for today.”

Cosima's face fell so fast it was comical. “Are you fucking serious?”

She raised the agenda book to cover her amusement. “Yes. It's says right here, go down on Cosima for, let’s see, the entire morning, and then let her fuck me however she wants for the rest of the day.”

“Bitch.” Cosima grinned and unfolded herself from the chair to knock the agenda book from Delphine's hands and pull her down for a long Nutella flavored kiss. “Although actually, those plans sound pretty damn good to me. Please tell me you actually pencilled that in.”

“Maybe, maybe not.”

Grabbing Cosima's ass with both hands, Delphine kissed her neck just the way she liked, then moved one hand up to rub the center of her back, delighting in the muscles moving under her hands. She had missed this, all of it, and from the way Cosima's body melted against hers, Cosima had missed it too. She saw it in the shape of her smile and the soft vulnerability in her eyes, and she felt it in the movement of her arms and her hips, in Cosima's breath on her mouth.

Cosima didn't just miss this; she needed it, needed what Delphine and only Delphine could give her. Delphine held her heart and her body in her hand. She could ask Cosima to do anything.

Early in their relationship, Delphine had felt a twinge of guilt over how very turned on that knowledge made her, how much that power over Cosima went to her head and between her legs. 

But then, Cosima knew it too. Cosima saw whatever Delphine's face did when Cosima got all sexy vulnerable, all willing and open like that – Delphine's pulse sped up and became more visible, and her breath changed, and probably her pupils dilated. Sometimes she bit her lip before she could catch herself, and of course Cosima noticed that too.

And then Cosima's sweet, vulnerable, “I'm all yours and I'll do anything for you” smile turned just a little bit wicked.

“Brat,” she whispered against Cosima's lips, and Cosima purred as she pushed her hips against Delphine's.

“Your brat,” Cosima agreed.

Unlike most women Delphine knew, Cosima possessed full awareness of her own beauty, although it wasn't until after Cosima moved up to Toronto that the fact clicked in Delphine's mind. Perhaps Delphine hadn't thought of her that way at first because Cosima's beauty was less traditional, and because Cosima's methods of flaunting it never superseded her other traits. Cosima was as confident of her beauty as she was of her intelligence, a combination Delphine spent so much of her own life unable to sync up.

And when Cosima stretched herself out on the rumpled hotel bed, as willing and helpless and vulnerable as Delphine ever wanted to see her, she grinned, and knew goddamn well how she made Delphine feel.

Delphine slid her underwear down her legs, then removed her bra and watched Cosima squirm on the bed, waiting. Delphine lowered herself down and kissed Cosima’s left hip. There didn't need to be any order to these events, as long as they ended up in the right place, and they most certainly would. There was nowhere to be, no reason to rush. So she kissed Cosima's stomach and smiled at the little gurgles of digestion while Cosima ran her finger tips along her scalp.

“I brought the harness,” Cosima said. “Just so you know.”

Of course she did. Excellent. “That was thoughtful of you. We'll have to put it to good use sometime. I'm rather preoccupied right here at the moment though.”

“We do have all day.”

Delphine hummed in agreement and traced Cosima's body with her lips and fingers and palms, and then gently nudged her thighs opened and breathed her in. 

“You've been masturbating every day,” she said to the inside of Cosima's left thigh. “Are you sure you're up for it?”

Cosima bounced her thigh against Delphine's face. “For your information, I have not gotten off at all in _four_ days. Hard to get in the mood when I'm worried sick about your hot ass being so far away. And so yes, I am very much up for it.”

Delphine ran her tongue along the tendon connecting Cosima's thigh to the front of her pelvis. “Are you absolutely sure?”

Now Cosima growled and dug her fingers into Delphine's scalp. “Yes! I was fucking up for it last night!”

She stroked Cosima's hips and hummed into the soft skin below her navel. “Fucking up for it, or up for fucking?”

Cosima swore and lurched up to give Delphine what she knew she deserved, but Delphine gripped her hips and pressed her forehead into Cosima's lower abdomen. “No,” she giggled, “no, you stay here. I'll give you what you want. I promise.”

She dragged her nails down the sides of Cosima's hips and thighs and swam in the heady scent of her body, of her arousal – the scent that only Delphine got, other than Cosima herself. Then she slid two fingers between Cosima’s labia and pushed her tongue against the center of Cosima's body before pulling her face up and then giggling at Cosima's sharp burst of “Oh god DAMN! Yes!”

“I've missed you,” Delphine hissed into her clit, remembering the last time she'd come back to Cosima's body after a long absence, with the same desperate rush of emotion, but with far more tears. Both times, and always now, Cosima was strong and healthy and _here_ and no one would take her away again.

Cosima sighed and growled at the same time. “Oh fuck, I missed you too.”

She licked her again, more gently this time, and then pressed her lips against Cosima's clit, and her heart surged with Cosima's hips, rising and bucking up to meet her mouth. 

It didn't take her long to come, gasping and screaming and grabbing that sheets, and Delphine held on while she thrashed, her own arousal pulsing through her entire body. 

While Cosima lay limp and quivering on the bed, Delphine crawled up her body, dropping wet Cosima-flavored kisses and rubbing her cheeks on Cosima’s breasts as she went. When she got to her face, she kissed her full sweet lips and her damp eyes and told her she loved her again and again.

Some tears, then, but only a few, and easily kissed away. “Are you okay?” she whispered.

Cosima nodded and gave her a weak smile. “Fucking perfect, yeah.”

Cosima didn't let her stay on top for long. Once she got some strength back, she nudged Delphine onto her back and sucked on her nipples until Delphine nearly came from that alone. Then she moved her mouth up to Delphine’s neck to repeat her attentions there, and slid a strong warm hand between Delphine's legs and stroked every nook and cranny and ridge, before fucking Delphine into oblivion.

“You're mine,” Cosima whispered against her cheek as the shock waves of Delphine's orgasm fizzled away.

Delphine laughed with the traces of energy she had left. “Oui. Et tu es à moi.”

She lay there, utterly claimed and spent, her circulation and breathing returning to normal, every surface of her body slick with sweat or something else, and Cosima watched her. She knew it even with her eyes closed, felt the warmth of her gaze on her body. Cosima could watch all she wanted, could watch for the rest of Delphine's life. Delphine reached an arm up over her head and opened her eyes as much as energy allowed.

Cosima frowned.

“What's wrong?” Delphine asked.

“You'll tell me if I get too possessive, yeah?”

Delphine pinched her chin and kissed her nose. “I will tell you, yes.”

Still, Cosima tensed her lips. Stroking the side of Delphine's neck where her lips and teeth had been a moment ago, she said, “Sorry about that.”

“Really?”

“Really. It’s huge. It’ll be there for days.” Cosima sat up and traced random patterns along Delphine's torso. “You know, it's funny. If we were still in the Middle East, or Iran, or wherever, it wouldn't matter. You'd have it covered up anyway. I totally missed my opportunity to give you like, three hickeys a day while we were both over there.”

“It wasn't always covered. Some of the clinics were for women only.”

“Yeah, but still.”

She basked in her post-coital warmth, drifting off into a mixture of sleep and memory as Cosima curled up around her. She thought back to every time she'd removed her head scarf around other women, and when they had revealed themselves that way to her. She remembered the surprising thrill of it, the sudden openness and vulnerability of seeing another woman reveal herself that way, and then reciprocating. The unspoken trust, the nonverbal statement “You can see me this way.” She remembered the first time she'd seen Kimia's hair, ears, and neck, on their third day together in Iran. It had been a long day packed with people, and Delphine had blushed to see her tour guide undress her head that way, despite a lifetime of seeing every woman's hair, ears, and neck. They stood in a public bathroom in a hospital, surrounded by other women making similar adjustments, and Delphine had turned away to preserve Kimia’s modesty before remembering that she wasn't expected to.

One day she would tell Cosima that story, but not today. Not while Cosima felt so possessive of Delphine that she was leaving marks on her. She reached over and stroked Cosima's bicep.

“No one else sees me like this,” she assured her. “They never have, and they never will.”

Cosima's face softened marginally. “I am not the first person to see you naked, love. Or to watch you come.”

“You know that's not what I mean.”

Cosima lowered her head over Delphine's stomach and kissed her scar, then scooted down until her ass slid off the bed. With one hand on the bed beside her, she ran her other hand up Delphine's right calf until her thumb grazed the base of her knee. With a sort of reverence, Cosima kissed her knee and traced the tiny, barely visible scar.

“You keep getting hurt when I'm not around.”

“It's less serious each time, though. Next time will be nothing more than a bruise.”

“I don't want you getting hurt at all.” She kissed her knee again and then turned her attention higher, to the still damp and swollen folds between her legs, and tickled her with her breath. “Now here's a sight that I've really missed.”

Too weak and smitten to do anything else, Delphine stroked the top of Cosima's hair. “It's missed you too.”

“Is it too soon?”

Before she could ask too soon for what, Cosima's tongue brushed her clit, sending electric shocks through her body, making her twitch.

“Mmm, too direct,” Cosima said, to herself or to Delphine or both, and then she kissed her lower, at the edge of her vagina, so softly she wouldn't have felt it anywhere less sensitive.

Delphine almost told her it wouldn't do any good, that her last orgasm was too recent and any sensation was a half second away from discomfort, but Cosima kept her kisses soft, indirect, and spaced out. She took the time to massage Delphine's legs between kisses and to tell her how beautiful she was, and all Delphine could do was bask in the attention, giggling when Cosima made some little remark directed at her clitoris, said in the sort of hushed tone as though Delphine wasn't supposed to hear it. And then, eventually, when Cosima kissed her clit again, the tendrils of sensation snaking through Delphine's body were nothing but pleasure, and before long she crested into a warm, gentle orgasm wrapped in Cosima’s arms.

*

They stayed in the room until after dark, either in bed or lounging in the jacuzzi until their blood pressure dropped enough that they were willing to get dressed and go out for food. Before they left, though, Delphine remembered something very important.

“I got you something.”

“Oh yeah?” Cosima wiggled her underwear into place and turned. When she saw the books in Delphine's hands, she burst out laughing.

“Turkish and Persian,” Delphine said, in case Cosima couldn't figure it out on her own. “I thought about mailing them to you, but I wanted to give them to you in person.”

“So you've been carrying these around for weeks, just waiting?”

“Yes, but I didn't mind. They made me think of you.”

Cosima turned the two translated copies of Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone over in her hands and sighed. “I wish I'd been there with you. The whole time.”

“Me too. You would have liked both Turkey and Iran, for the most part.”

“I would've liked being with you.”

“Yes, but the countries also, and not just those two. There's a lot that I wish I could have shown you. A lot of good food, interesting people, history, culture. All the things you like.”

Cosima set the books down next to her own suitcase and clicked her tongue against her teeth, the earlier giddy joy gone from her face. “Yeah. I can't really say the same for my past six weeks, unfortunately.”

“I know.” She could remind Cosima that she’d been to Israel and said it was beautiful, and that she’d spent quality time with her family while Delphine had been almost entirely alone, but she didn’t. That wasn’t the point.

Cosima shook herself and pulled Delphine over for another kiss. “Thank you, though. Seriously.”

“You're welcome. And hurry up. I'm hungry.”

With a renewed grin, Cosima pulled her pants on and fussed with the belt. “Oui oui madame! See, I've been practicing French while you're gone.”

If she weren't so cute, Delphine would have rolled her eyes, but instead she laughed. “Well, lesson for the night – we don't ever say it like that, okay? And we're in Germany, remember?”

“Oh ja, I remember. Too bad my German really sucks, like, even worse than my French.” Cosima pulled a long-sleeved t-shirt over her tank top and wriggled it into place. “What are you in the mood for, by the way? Bratwurst? Schnitzel? Frankfurters?” She flashed her cheeky Leda teeth at Delphine, who'd been dressed and ready to go for ten minutes.

“I was thinking of a döner kebab, actually, if you don't mind. Or a yufka. They’re bigger.” Just the thought made her salivate. She’d already located the nearest kebab shop with Google Maps, and if Cosima could hurry up, she could have greasy meat, sheep cheese, and just enough vegetables to make it seem healthy, all wrapped in crusty flatbread, in about five minutes.

Cosima frowned up at her from her squat putting on her shoes. “Turkish? Didn't you have that for, like, two straight weeks not so long ago?”

“Yes, but it's different here. I told you that. Anyway, I’m not in the mood for authentic.”

“Right.” Cosima smirked. “I’ll keep that in mind whenever the topic of French cuisine comes up.” 

“Are you ready yet?”

Cosima hopped over while adjusting the strap on one boot. “Yes, ma'am. Let's eat.”

* * *  
* * *

“You gotta get earbuds, babe.”

Delphine snarled at her as Cosima dropped a kiss on her shoulder. “And lose one after spending $65 on the pair? I don't think so.”

Past Cosima's head, a humid sunrise spread over the quaint Rhine valley landscape speeding by their train window. It was a lovely bucolic view, but Delphine couldn't shake the contrasts with Syria three days ago, where she'd sat and watched children drawing pictures in the shade of a bombed out apartment building, and where most people showered less than once a week due to water rationing. She’d dreamed about it last night, though it was more likely an amalgamation of countries and people, dirty, hungry, and dying. A dream based on reality. And here Delphine sat, her coffee in the cup holder at her elbow, hungry only because Cosima let her sleep in and they'd needed to rush, and frustrated over _ses putain d'écouteurs!_

Deep breath. 

She set the headphones in her lap and poured some coffee down her throat in an effort to chase her demons away again. The coffee tasted bitter, but it was something.

“I would love to see you with a big mess of Christmas lights sometime,” Cosima quipped.

All that sex yesterday must have been good for Cosima if she was this chipper at 7:10 in the morning. Or perhaps it was all that extra time lying about in Toronto that she’d complained about. Either way, she leagues beyond Delphine in the energy and mood departments right now.

Delphine tried again, focusing on the plug end of her headphones and getting it to fit back through the tangled knot that had formed somehow in her carry-on without the benefit of human hands. 

“Do you want some help, though?” Cosima asked her. “Like, for real?”

“No.”

Cosima leaned against the window and kept watching with a little smile on her face. “Suit yourself.”

“You don't have to watch me, either. I'm sure there's cows or something out the window that are more interesting than this. I think I saw a women's soccer team out there a minute ago.” That was a lie, and even if there were one, making out the gender of a soccer team at this speed would be impossible. And anyway, it didn't work. Cosima didn't even glance out the window. In fact, she turned even more in Delphine's direction. It’s like she’d heard Delphine’s heart begging for the attention yesterday, and decided to keep piling it on today. 

“I know I don't have to watch you, but I went six weeks without watching you. I gotta make up for it.”

Delphine grunted again. In her hands, the white cord managed to knot itself even tighter, and Delphine swore under her breath. It was like the opposite of putting on a tourniquet with gloves on, but even more infuriating. 

“Besides,” Cosima went on, “this is the only thing in all of existence that you actually suck at, so I do kinda have to watch. If I had more battery life on my phone I'd be video taping this.”

“Please don’t.”

Now Cosima giggled with her little tongue-between-her-teeth smile. “Alright, but you are fucking adorable. Just so you know.”

Delphine gave up on the headphones and stuffed them back into her bag, more roughly than usual. They were already tangled so it didn’t matter. She needed to get another clip for them to prevent this. The last one got lost somewhere between Ankara and Beirut. 

“How are you this awake?” she asked Cosima.

“Caffeine.”

“You had one cup of coffee.”

“Yeah, but I haven’t had much recently, and what I have been drinking wasn’t Turkish or whatever you’ve been drinking.”

Delphine didn’t respond, but leaned back in her seat and watched vineyards rolling by outside. She had been fine until leaving the hotel that morning. Cosima took care of everything, which of course was why they’d missed real breakfast and settled for train station quality bread and coffee. 

But Cosima was there, rubbing her knee on Delphine’s leg, and they’d gotten on the train together and sat down together, and they would spend their night together, too. 

She put her hand on Cosima’s thigh. “Whatever the reason, I am nowhere near as chipper as you are right now.”

“I can tell. I was serious about helping with your headphones, though. Or you can borrow mine.”

She sighed and rubbed the corduroy encasing Cosima’s leg. “Really I just want to sleep, honestly.”

“Okay.” Cosima stood and squeezed between Delphine’s knees and those of the woman sitting across from her. “Go ahead.”

For all her teasing and cheekiness, Cosima was still the sweetest person Delphine knew. She scooted into Cosima’s seat, warmed by her ass, and curled up on the pillow Cosima already had set up against the window. “Thank you, chérie.”

Cosima sat in Delphine’s old seat and leaned over to kiss her. “Don’t mention it.”

* * *

They reached Tübingen, a scenic university city south of Frankfurt, late in the morning, and parted ways with a kiss at the front of the hotel. Walking along the cobbled streets past store fronts of home goods and expensive sporting equipment, towards a well-staffed clinic in a safe neighborhood, Delphine's mind drifted again back to Samira in Hama. She'd gotten a single text message from her that morning, saying that everyone was well, and there were no terrible effects of the Leda treatment or the abortifacient Delphine gave Samira's adopted daughter.

Delphine would almost certainly never see either of them again, just like most of her patients. 

She walked past a store selling men’s shaving kits for more money that most of Delphine’s recent patients could ever afford, and for a moment, bitterness towards Germany and it's prosperity and safety welled up in her gut, followed by guilt at her own participation in such displays of wealth in the past. Delphine used to own a 500€ bottle of perfume, and one year she had bought Jérôme a “mid-range” watch for 1,000€. The first dinner Aldous Leekie bought for her in Toronto cost hundreds of dollars, including wine.

She couldn’t fault Germany in particular for any sort of prosperity gap, but it picked at her brain nonetheless as she walked on past bakeries and tobacco shops. Germany had taken in hundreds of thousands of refugees, many times the number taken in by France or Canada, but the war still raged in Syria. A different but similar war flickered up in fits and spurts in Iraq, and a woman with five children lived in squalor in Djibouti because Yemen was on fire.

A German man on his cell phone bumped against Delphine's shoulder and she swore at him, then took a breath. She couldn't think this way. She stepped into the shade of a building that appeared one or two hundred years old, but when she looked closer saw it was much younger, and she remembered that all the buildings here were young. Tübingen used be to Hama, bombed out and recovering from a brutal dictatorship.

She drained half her water bottle and rubbed the back of her neck. The demons had snuck up on her again while she wasn’t paying attention. She could talk to Cosima about this later. Cosima would understand. For now, though, she had a job to do, and a Leda to cure.

* 

When Delphine returned to their hotel that afternoon, Cosima greeted her with a big tongue-in-mouth kiss, but pulled back when Delphine failed to match her ardor.

“You okay?”

“Mhm.” She rested her forehead on Cosima's head and breathed her in. She had gone too long, far too long, without the simple pleasure of coming back to Cosima, regardless of how her day had been. “I've been thinking too much,” she admitted.

“Yeah? You wanna talk about it?”

At an earlier stage of their relationship, Delphine would have declined. She would have lied from the start and said she was fine, with no qualification. This time, she nodded. After dropping her bag in the one chair, she sat on the edge of the bed and took off her shoes, and let Cosima's warm embrace remind her of why she was doing this, why cracking her heart open was worth it. And then she talked. She talked about what she saw in Syria and the people she'd helped there, and all the contrasts she saw with life here in Germany, and back in Toronto, and in France. She told her about the perfume, the watch, the expensive dinner. She told her about the armed men patrolling the river in Hama, and the loud tourists walking along the Neckar here in Tübingen.

“I never felt unsafe in Syria,” she assured Cosima. “I wasn't uncomfortable. I had everything I needed. All in all, it was fine. But I was lucky, you know? I wasn’t like the locals.”

Cosima kept her arms wrapped around Delphine's waist and rested her head on her shoulder while she talked. “I know,” she said. “I wasn't there, but I know.”

Of course she knew. Cosima responded similarly after they left Djibouti and stayed in a resort hotel in Oman. Delphine pressed her mouth to the top of her head. “I know you do. Thank you, mon amour.”

“For what?”

The list of things she could thank Cosima for filled her head until she could cry. She shook her head. “Everything. Listening. Knowing. Everything.”

“For being a jerk on the train when you're cranky?”

Delphine laughed and flicked Cosima's nose ring. “For that too, yes! That's how I know it's really you.”

They ate lunch in the room – pre-assembled sandwiches from the bakery around the corner – and looked at what Cosima had worked on while Delphine was out.

“It's semi-firm,” Cosima said, turning her laptop so Delphine could see the itinerary for the next few weeks. “But it’s way more firm than anything else. All these are people we have actual appointments for, but it’s only a third of the list.”

Delphine scrolled, and scrolled. “Twenty-seven cities?” She did some quick math. “About a third then, you’re right.”

“For this round, yeah. We'll have to go back and forth a lot, more than we did before, but it’s all in Europe. I checked in with the eastern Russian Ledas, and the only one who got back to me – well, her doctor got back to me – said that everything was peachy keen and she could participate later in the summer, which works great because neither one of us wants to schlepp all the way out to Omsk and then pivot back to fucking Portugal or whatever for a few more days.”

Delphine nodded. “Especially since we're going to Asia later anyway.”

“Right.” Cosima leaned back in her chair. “You still okay with one week in Paris instead of two?”

Delphine smiled, reminded of a time not so long ago that Cosima had itched to cut her own personal vacation short in order to continue treating as many Ledas as possible, and finish as soon as possible. Now Delphine found herself in the same position. “As long you promise to let me drag you back there someday, yes. One week is perfectly fine for now. I think we might want to leave sooner, even.”

“And are we, uh, still seeing your dad while we're there?”

There was that, which Delphine tried not to think too much about. “I emailed him yesterday with the new dates. He hasn't replied yet.”

“Okay.”

“What else do you have?” Delphine asked, pointing to the European Ledas notebook Cosima had open to the Hungarian pages.

“We're all set for Judit over in Kecskemet, which is one of the easiest cities in that region to pronounce, by the way, so this will be a fun trip, but anyways, we have nothing from Emese in Budapest.”

Delphine could have pointed out that Cosima managed to mispronounce the city of Nice, so it wasn't the regional spellings in Hungary that were at issue, but she didn't. She looked at the other map Cosima had printed out earlier, showing all ninety-five European Leda locations marked with little sticky arrows bearing the Foundation's “official” code: contact made or not, appointment made or not, location confirmed or not. Some nations, like France, Germany, and Portugal could barely hold all the arrows, while Ukraine only had one – indicating the single Ukrainian Leda who'd survived Helena and the Prolethians. A small handful of nations had no markers at all.

All things considered, it was remarkable so many Ledas still lived in Europe. Between Helsinki, Helena, and their deadly genetics, most of these women would never know how lucky they were to be alive. Delphine flipped through the notebook, seeing fuzzy half-formed Leda faces with each page.

Ninety-five women in Europe and Asiatic Russia, and still a fraction of the original number.

“Do you ever wonder,” she asked Cosima, “if Neolution didn't expect quite so many of you to survive?”

“Honestly? Yeah. All the damn time.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Chère Delphine,_

_We would be happy to see you 26 May. We can have lunch in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Perhaps at 12:30?_

_AC_

Delphine stared at the email on her phone and stopped right where she was, fully absorbed in the text until a passing cyclist clipped her arm. 

“Eh putain!” she called, but the cyclist rode on. 

Up ahead, Cosima turned. “You alright?”

In lieu of an answer, Delphine walked up to where Cosima stood in front of a shoe store advertising sales in both Dutch and English, and handed Cosima her phone. Cosima could certainly understand the three sentences on the screen. What was much harder to explain was the rush of anxiety that came with the email, arriving several days and a handful of cities after Delphine informed her father of their new Paris travel dates.

“Your dad said he'll be happy to see us?” Cosima asked.

“Oui. Him and whoever this other person is.”

“And you still don't know who that is?”

“Not a clue.”

Cosima handed her back her phone and wrapped an arm around Delphine's waist, gently leading her further along the downtown Groningen street as the wind picked up. “Could be he's seeing someone,” Cosima suggested. “A girlfriend, partner, whatever.”

“Could be.” Never mind that Papa had never dated at all while she'd been in regular contact with him before. It wasn't like him.

“Took him a while to get back with you, though,” Cosima said. “You told him about the changed dates how long ago?”

“I don't know.”

“Not important, I guess. But you're stressed the hell out about it. I can tell. Your face is doing that thing.”

Delphine slid her phone back into her jacket pocket, pulled Cosima close, and didn't answer. She didn't have to answer. At this point Cosima knew her moods almost better than she did, and anyway, Cosima hadn't asked. She had said. They strolled along the cobbled sidewalks of Groningen's inner city, Cosima occasionally pausing to look at the menu posted on some restaurant's window or Delphine lingering at some boutique window. 

“I have nothing to wear,” she realized out loud.

“Uh...” Cosima leaned back and looked Delphine up and down. “Since when?”

“I mean, I have nothing decent to wear to this restaurant my father wants to take us to. I expect it's quite nice.”

“You have a couple nice outfits. What about that white blouse and blue skirt you wear sometimes when you're meeting doctors and shit? The one you wore to meet Dr. N'Jikam in Tunisia, remember?”

“Is that really the last time I wore that?”

“No, but it's the time I remember the best, and you've worn parts of it other times. Point is, you can wear that to lunch with your dad. Yeah?”

The outfit Cosima referred to fit well with a stethoscope around her neck or a clipboard in her hands, exactly the environment she'd chosen it for, not for lunch in Saint-Germain-des-Prés with her father. “I need something different. Not casual, but not something that screams “I'm going to write you a prescription,” you know?”

“Uh...” Cosima said again. “No. Did you reply to him, by the way? To your dad?”

“Not yet.”

“Why not?”

“Because it's cold outside.”

“Well.” Cosima looked around and then yanked Delphine across the street and into a Burger King, where the smell of french fries and cooked beef reminded Delphine that she hadn't eaten in several hours. No wonder her hands shook.

“I was going to do it back at the hotel!” she protested. “And we're not eating here.”

“No, although I have been meaning to try their new veggie burger sometime. You, however, have an email to write.”

* * *

Sarah called on Monday, in the afternoon for Toronto and right around bed time in Groningen. Listening to Cosima catch up with her sister, Delphine wrapped herself in a light blanket and basked in the sense of being home, even though it was her very first visit to the Netherlands. She'd taken a deliciously hot shower after a wonderful meal paid for by the local Leda's doctor, and she and Cosima had spent hours before that strolling around the inner city and the canals despite the chilly weather. Now she curled up with her head pushed against Cosima's hip, Cosima's fingers stroking her hair, and if she'd been a cat, she would have purred. 

On the Skype window, Kira and Charlotte popped in and out, just home from school and wanting to know about wooden shoes and windmills and whether people actually talked about dykes all the time.

“What do you even know about dykes?” Sarah asked Kira.

“I know it's another word for lesbian,” Kira said, giggling. “And I know there's a lot of them in the Netherlands!”

“Yeah, and it's not a nice thing to call somebody,” Sarah said. 

“Same word, different meanings,” was the answer Cosima went with, and Delphine zoned out again until she dimly heard Sarah send the girls outside to play, signaling the transition into a more adult conversation.

“Helena told me something that might be useful,” Sarah said. “About her time in Europe, with the Prolethians.”

Cosima sat up a little straighter on the bed, and Delphine pulled herself into a seated reclining position. 

“What'd she say?” Cosima asked.

“She said she was in three different cities that spoke French. She doesn't know which ones, except one was definitely Paris 'cause she said she saw the Eiffel Tower.”

Delphine imagined Helena as she'd never personally seen her, as the trained assassin killing women who looked like Cosima. She'd pictured it before, many times, but for the first time, she imagined Helena in Paris, walking down the crooked narrow streets and stopping for a drink at a café, or riding the subway, a rifle with a silencer on her lap. 

Cosima nodded. “Yeah, I think Danielle Fournier was in Paris when she was killed.”

“Sounds about right. She kind of rambled on a bit; you know how she gets. I didn't even ask her about it, though. I was just there helping out with the boys for a bit this morning, and she started telling me about it right after they went down for their nap after lunch. Started talking about this city with a beautiful university, a palace, and she said Tomas kept pushing her along, not letting her look like she wanted to. The other city she went to, she said they had a statue, a big fat man, she said, pointing his finger and leaning on a cane. I guess she got a better look at that one. She said she wanted to shoot it, but she couldn't get a good spot.”

Cosima tapped out notes on a Word document while Sarah talked, her face back in what Delphine thought of as super-concentration-mode. “Interesting, and probably better for her that she didn't shoot the statue, wherever it was. Did she, um, did she kill people in all three of these cities?”

“No, just Paris and the second one. The third one she said they looked and they couldn't find her, so they left.”

“Good to know. Lucky for that sister, I guess.”

* * *

They departed Groningen at 6:30 on Tuesday morning, mostly well-rested and prepared for a nine-hour journey to Nancy, their first city in France and already the butt of quite a few of Cosima's jokes. As expected.

“So Nancy's pretty?” Cosima asked. “Is that what you're telling me?”

“That is exactly what I'm telling you.”

Cosima giggled. “And we're gonna spend how many days inside of her?”

One would have thought Cosima might have gotten tired of these jokes after she made the itinerary two weeks ago, but apparently juvenile humor never got old for her. Delphine planted a firm kiss on the back of Cosima's hand and the toyed with the square burgundy ring on Cosima's ring finger.

“I really do have a lifetime of bad jokes from you to look forward to, don't I?” she asked.

“You bet your sweet ass. Hey, do you think Nancy has a sweet ass? We should look into that. Maybe there's a farmer who could – ”

Delphine pointedly turned away to watch field and marshlands roll by as the train approached and then passed Assen. She had plenty to do, but nine more hours in which to do it, broken into several chunks of thirty minutes to four hours. Hopefully the German trains maintained their reputation for relative punctuality. In some cases they had less than ten minutes to get from one train to the next. Thankfully they'd brought plenty of food to eat on the way. 

They spent most of their trip in quiet, happy companionship, holding hands or snuggling unless one of them actively worked on a laptop or went to stretch their legs along the corridor. Then, shortly after transferring onto a local train in Strasbourg, Delphine's phone rang with an unfamiliar Canadian number. “Hello?” she said. 

“Hey, Dr. Cormier,” came Krystal Goderitch's voice, drawing out the final diphthong in Delphine's last name and wafting out several feet beyond Delphine's cell phone. Delphine could have been flattered that Krystal used her real name instead of French Doctor, but she was too unsettled for flattery. 

“Hello, Krystal,” she said, sharing confused eye contact with Cosima.

“So I need your help with something,” Krystal said.

“With what? And, out of curiosity, how did you get my phone number?”

“Well, so, like, my friend Nicole and her boyfriend, well, really he's more of a fuck buddy, you know, but she calls him her boyfriend, but anyways, they were screwing around at her place last week with these products they bought online. This stuff that's supposed to give you, like, mind blowing orgasms, right? And so now Nicole has a nasty-ass rash all over her coochie that's like, oozing pus, and her boyfriend slash fuck buddy slash whatever is telling everyone she gave _him_ an STD even though she obviously didn't because she was actually a virgin before she slept with him the first time. Can you believe that? It was so cute.”

“Euh...” At least the people sitting across from them had headphones on. Hopefully the people sitting behind them did as well.

Krystal went on. “... so, like, anyways, I knew you guys would totally be into this after you helped us out with the cosmetics stuff last year. I can send you all the samples and shit. Oh, and I went by that shitty little comics shop you have as a cover, but the loser behind the counter said you weren't there anymore. He just gave me your business card. You guys really need to get better front desk help.”

In the train seat beside her, Cosima's nose quivered with repressed mirth, which was enough to set Delphine's giggles off too if she wasn't careful, so she turned her whole torso away and watched the countryside of Bas-Rhin speed past the grimy window. “Euh, I'm sorry,” she told Krystal, “but I'm afraid I'm not following you very well. Could you, euh...”

“Well, like, you know nipple creams, right?”

The answer was yes, but Krystal didn't really need to know that. “Euh... Could you give me a one-sentence summary, please, Krystal? I don't have much time.”

Cosima snorted at the lie. “I've heard that before,” she muttered under her breath.

On the other end of the phone, Krystal groaned. “Okay fine. So this company, Cum-a-licious, right, is selling clit and nipple cream that's making girls break out in hives, and some girls are growing gnarly, like, warthog hair down there, and that's if they're lucky. One girl grew _testicles_ down there after she used it. Like, legitimately, a frickin' ball sack between her lady bits, and the company's not taking any responsibility for it. And I just learned about all this, like, yesterday.”

Delphine glanced over at the other passengers again – a middle aged woman and her teenage daughter, both with headphones on, both focused on their phone screens. Merci à dieu. “Testicles?” Delphine repeated softly. “Seriously?”

“Seriously. Like, not even joking.”

Putain de merde, how did Krystal even find these things? “Are you sure?” she asked.

“Positive. Trust me, I know balls when I see them.”

“Well, that does sound usual.” Delphine managed. “And unpleasant.”

“That's, like, the understatement of the century,” Krystal replied. 

“Do you have proof?” Delphine asked, and immediately kicked herself. Of course Krystal had “proof.”

“Fuck yeah I have proof. I'm emailing you all the pictures right now.” She paused.

Delphine cringed at the thought and shook her head as though Krystal sat in front of her. Her poor email account didn't deserve all that. “That won't be necessary, thank you. Um. I'm not sure what you'd like us to do, frankly. We don't work with – ”

“Cum-a-licious was founded by a former Brightborn executive,” Krystal said, “like, last year. Obviously they're just continuing all the genetic experiments with different products, and since it's the sex industry they figured no one would do anything about it.”

Okay, so there was some connection, at least, and she probably had a point about the sex industry. Still. “That's unfortunate, but – ”

“And they're having a convention or something in London in the beginning of June, and that geeky loser at the comic shop said you were gonna be there at the same time.”

Cosima looked over from the Word document that she hadn't touched since the phone call began and mouthed, “what the fuck?”

Delphine thought fast and came up empty. “Euh, we'll have to think about this and get back to you,” she said. “We're very busy right now.”

“Yeah, sure no problem. I'm sending you the files right now. Gimme a call or a text or whatever when you're ready to talk.”

* * *

Once they got to Nancy and checked in at their hotel, Delphine kissed Cosima and left her alone for several hours. All of the train transfers plus the call from Krystal meant that Cosima only revised three sentences in her dissertation from a ten-page list of advisor-recommended revisions. If at all possible, Cosima wanted to defend in late autumn and have a doctorate in hand by Christmas. Or so she said. Delphine's money was on a spring defense date, unless their upcoming Leda treatment schedule proceeded at a miraculously quick pace. 

While Cosima worked, or claimed to be working, Delphine spent the late afternoon searching the clothing boutiques in Nancy's city center for something decent she could wear to lunch with Papa. She bought a summer dress and some new shoes at one boutique, but it didn't lessen her anxiety any. Nor did the purchase of black slacks and a white blouse from a second boutique. When it came down to it, it wasn't the outfit that really worried her. It was _him_. 

She couldn't explain it very well, even to Cosima, who listened so patiently and did everything possible to support her. In truth, Delphine had been anxious about meeting with Papa all year, perhaps even a bit longer. When she pictured him in her mind, Papa always had the same severe, disapproving look he'd had so often in the past. She wanted to picture him smiling, as happy to see her as Cosima's parents were to see Cosima, but Papa bore no resemblance to Gene Niehaus. Papa had not hugged her in decades, and she'd never expected him to, but then Cosima brought her into a massive, messy, affectionate family that _hugged_ each other, and Delphine wasn't even sure what she wanted anymore.

She thought back over the last conversation she'd had with Papa, and the ones before that, when he drove her from Maman's house in Lille to his two-bedroom apartment in the northern suburbs of Paris and back again. A two-hour drive each way, twice a year for about a decade, and she only remembered snippets of what they'd said to each other.

“Madame?” 

A young woman at the third boutique leaned into her field of view, snapping her back to reality in front of a display of light jackets. Right. She was here to spruce up her appearance, somehow, to reach some fashion goal she couldn't even define. “Bonsoir,” she said, smiling at the store clerk. “Do you have this in black?”

The clerk did, and Delphine bought it, rubbing the smooth polyester blend between her fingers while she waited in line. For a few minutes, she lost herself listening to the conversations flowing around her, all in French. Finally, everything was in French.

She hadn't struggled with English in some time, but no matter how much vocabulary she mastered, and how much she loved talking with Cosima in any language, French just _flowed_ in ways that English didn't. She could be funny or precise or commanding in English, but in French she could be poetic. 

Or she could be with a better audience than the other customers at this boutique. 

That night, after purchasing five different potential outfits, not counting their mix-and-match potential, Delphine split her attention between the files Krystal had sent and a new article her father wrote for _Alternatives Economiques_. The words on her screen kept fuzzing in and out of focus, and she wasn't always sure which text belonged to whom.

Cosima kissed her temple with warm damp lips, fresh from the shower, and tapped Delphine's laptop, where Krystal's email shouted at them via capital letters, exclamation points, and strings of emojis. “Well?” Cosima asked.

“There's a few témoignages from alleged victims, a few images that are, euh, vraiment inquiétant, and a few reports from doctors, je n'sais pas where she got them, but they seem legitimate.” When she looked up again, Cosima stood half naked between her and the bed, watching her with her head cocked to one side, holding up a shirt like she'd been flash-frozen in the process of putting it on. “Quoi?” Delphine asked.

“You're gonna stop speaking English entirely in, like, twelve hours, aren't you?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Half of that sentence just now was in French. Did you notice that?”

“Non.” Well, okay, maybe she had noticed and just not cared. 

Cosima giggled. “God, and we're not even in Paris. Or is it worse in Nancy because it's a smaller city? I guess we'll find out.” She finished putting on her shirt and flopped down on the bed facing Delphine. “So, lemme check my comprehension. Krystal sent you some upsetting pictures, some doctors reports of unknown origin, and something else. What was the word with a T?”

Delphine thought back over what she'd said and yawned. “Doctors reports, pictures, yes, and tém...” She caught herself at the first syllable, and try as hard as she might, she could not remember the English word for _témoignages_. Perhaps in the morning, when she'd had a good night's sleep and wasn't spending the whole day on trains, her English might return to form. “Whatever it is when people talk to reporters or police or whatever. They tell their story. I don't know the word right now.”

Cosima took her hand and massaged her palm with a drop of warm lavender-scented oil. “That's okay. I know what you mean. And I like it when you speak French. Scratch that, I _love_ it when you speak French.”

Delphine blew her a kiss and leaned back in the hotel's desk chair. “Merci à dieu.”

“But seriously, what are you gonna do about Krystal? You just gonna keep encouraging her?”

That was the question, wasn't it? “I am curious. And she's right, the sex industry is under-regulated and incidents are underreported. Sexual health issues in general are underreported.”

Cosima flashed her canines. “See, look, a whole sentence in English; you've still got it.”

Delphine swiveled the chair and tried to kick her, but the angle meant overextending her leg, and a shot of pain went up her hamstring. She swore and laughed at the same time. 

“Okay, so that wasn't in English, but I forgive you.” Cosima hopped off the bed and draped herself over Delphine's shoulders. “Please tell me that you're not actually thinking of meeting with Krystal.”

“Only briefly, if at all,” she said. “Just long enough to convince her a lawyer is a better bet than we are.”

“Babe, you can tell her that in an email.”

“I know, but we're going to London anyway.”

“London is a big city. It's not like we'll be stuck in a hotel with her.” Cosima stood up suddenly. “Are we?”

“Maybe I feel some responsibility towards her, hm? And no, we're not staying in the same hotel, unless there's something I don't know. Is that a good enough answer?”

“No, actually. Why do you feel responsible for her?”

“I didn't say responsible _for_ her. I said responsibility towards her. Different phrasing, but perhaps you didn't notice. Perhaps I was speaking in French by accident again.”

Cosima kissed her cheek and spun the chair around so Delphine faced her while she sat in the window sill. “Okay, why do you feel any responsibility whatsoever towards her? In any direction? She's a grown woman, we've already treated her...”

“I'm aware of that. And terrible things happened to her under my watch. Perhaps you are aware of that. And also, from what I've heard, she made herself at least a little bit useful to you while I was stuck on the island.”

Cosima crossed her arms and breathed deeply through her nose. “Oh, it's about that. Okay.” 

“Yes, in a way.” She'd thought that much was obvious, but then she did need to remind herself that Cosima did _not_ live inside her head, and couldn't read every thought she ever had. “You don't have to meet her,” she assured Cosima. “I can talk with her for fifteen minutes while you're doing whatever you want to be doing, and that will be that.”

“Will it be? Really?”

“What do you think will happen?” Delphine asked.

“I think she'll suck you down her disgusting rabbit hole of half-true conspiracies. That's what I think.”

“You've only met her once.”

“And I've heard enough about her to last a lifetime. Besides, that one time meeting her gave me all the information I needed even if Sarah and Felix hadn't told me all about her.”

“That's rather judgmental of you, don't you think?”

Cosima held up her hands. “Okay. Fine. You go meet with her, do whatever you want. Just keep me in the loop if she's gonna be, like, sharing a hotel room with us or anything.”

* * *

Delphine's appointment with Charline was set for 2 pm, at a clinic near the mortuary where she worked, so Delphine spent the morning strolling the city center of Nancy with Cosima and pretending that she'd forgotten all of her English overnight. It worked like a charm for frustrating Cosima, who swore that she wouldn't fuck Delphine for a week if she kept it up.

“Vraiment?” Delphine stroked the back of her neck and nipped her earlobe at the edge of the Place Stanislas. “Je ne te crois pas.” And she had several good ideas of ways to get Cosima to break that promise later that day. 

Overall, though, Cosima was an excellent sport about speaking French as much as possible, though her vocabulary wasn't quite up to the task of deciphering French restaurant menus without help.

“Joue de boeuf?” Cosima read from the menu in a glass case outside a busy little café. “Beef what, now?”

Delphine had already decided against the restaurant based on volume of customers, the lack of indoor seating, and the oncoming rain storm, but she pinched Cosima's cheeks with both hands and wiggled them around like a grandmother with an adored grandchild. “Joues,” she said.

“Oh. Oh!” Cosima took a comical step back from the restaurant. 

“It's okay, I think there's an Asian noodle shop across the square. They'll have something meatless, I think.”

In retribution for the earlier gesture, Cosima pinched Delphine's cheek hard enough to hurt just a little, and then pulled her in for a kiss. “And since you're speaking English again, I'll grab your other cheeks later.” 

“You promise?”

“Promise.”

“Bien. Although I was looking forward to convincing you by other means.” She draped her arm over Cosima's shoulders and they headed diagonally across the square, dodging delivery people, students, and tourists. At the statue of Stanislas, Duke of Lorraine and King of Poland, Cosima paused and looked up. Delphine had only seen pictures of Stanislas in books before, but in person he seemed like any other statue of a famous leader, only perhaps a bit more corpulent than most rulers would allow their statues to depict. Perhaps it was commissioned during one of those centuries when jowls equalled wealth. Cosima snapped a few pictures, and they continued on their search for lunch. 

“What do you think are the chances that that's the statue Helena remembers?” Cosima asked.

“Quelle statue?”

“The one from her time in France before, with Tomas. Remember? Sarah said she remembered a statue of a fat man with a cane, and here's a statue of a fat man with a cane.”

“It could be. I don't know how many statues of fat men there are in France. And you know, she might not have been in France then. Could have been Switzerland or Belgium.”

“Yeah, I know. Still, it's interesting she brought it up so recently, and our itinerary isn't exactly a secret. Helena must have seen it. The girls have it up on the fridge with a couple of DNA magnets that Kira made in art class.”

“Really?” 

“Seriously. I'm telling you, those kids are a trip and a half.”

The pan-Asian noodle restaurant was easy to find and less crowded than the more “traditional” French places around. They got tables by the window and ordered bowls of ramen and pho and watched the rain start until their food arrived. Cosima texted Helena the pictures of the statue and then they both tucked into their steaming bowls of deliciousness. Cosima removed her glasses and, as usual, commandeered a large bottle of hot sauce that she dumped onto her food every couple of spoonfuls until a sheen of sweat glistened on her forehead. Delphine made a mental note to buy a case of the stuff once they finally settled down and had a kitchen of their own. 

As they wrapped up their meals, Cosima's phone chirped, and Cosima turned it sideways so they could both read it. _YES SESTRA COSIMA THIS IS THE FAT MAN I SAW BEFORE._

“Holy all caps, batman,” Cosima muttered.

“You were right, though. Apparently.”

“Yeah, apparently. Not something I really wanted to be right about, though.”

Delphine drained the broth from her bowl and dabbed her lips with a paper napkin. She needed to do all of her sloppy, unladylike eating now, before lunch with Papa that coming Saturday with whomever he brought with him. The massive bowl of broth, noodles, and flank steak now sat heavy in her stomach. “Pourquoi?” she asked.

“I dunno. It's like, our traumatic pasts are close enough without this shit.”

Delphine belched, earning her a smile from Cosima, who seemed to revel in all of Delphine's less-than-ladylike qualities. “Helena's not here now,” she reminded Cosima. “And I think maybe you're right. I think maybe Helena wanted you to know this. Maybe she does remember the name of the city and she just doesn't want to say that. She's done that before. And now, no one is trying to kill you, or anyone.”

“That we know of.”

“Exactly. And if we don't know about them, we can't do anything about them, so we might as well relax.”

Cosima gathered up some of the remaining noodles from her own bowl. “On the other hand, isn't today's Leda kinda in the death business anyway?”

“Indeed. From the website, I gather that she does, ehm...” Her body had sponged up too much food to operate her brain at full capacity, so she went with the basic vocabulary. “She burns the bodies or she makes them last for a long time.”

“Ah.” Cosima slurped the noodles into her mouth and cleaned the resulting mess from her face. “I believe the word you're looking for there is _mortician._ Or _funeral director_. I guess it depends. Anyway, not a bad gig. Good job security.”

Delphine nodded. “Death never goes out of business, does it?”

“Unfortunately not.”

* * *

Charline, the Leda in Nancy, arrived at the clinic fifteen minutes early wearing orthopedic shoes and glasses that occupied half of her face. When Delphine shook her hand, the faint scent of formaldehyde coupled with a bespectacled look of classic Leda worry sent Delphine's heart back a few years to the day she and Cosima autopsied Jennifer Fitzsimmons. She pushed the image away and ushered Charline back to the treatment room. That day helped them get to where they were now.

The greatest shock, which shouldn't have surprised her at all, was hearing perfect metropolitan French coming from “Cosima's” mouth. She'd almost expected this woman's accent to have the same strong California accent that Cosima had, and she had to catch herself before complimenting Charline's pronunciation of “cœur” when she expressed a concern about familial heart disease. 

“Oh,” Delphine said, glancing over the chart from Charline's primary physician, “I wouldn't worry too much about that. All of your numbers look very good.”

Charline came in for a physical exam, but also for an experimental treatment that she hoped might treat some chronic pain from a car accident last year. In reality the pain treatment consisted of one shot, but Delphine said it required two, and Charline did not object. Delphine treated and examined her, and would have sent her on her way then, but her curiosity got the better of her. 

“Out of curiosity, were you here in Nancy or close by in the Spring of 2012?” Delphine knew the exact date of Danielle Fournier's death in Paris – March 26, 2012 – but that didn't mean Helena was in Nancy close to that same time, and she couldn't tip this woman off too much by specifying.

Charline stiffened. “Why?”

“There was an outbreak,” Delphine lied, “of a very rare condition, among women with your specific genotype, which your doctor provided me with. It didn't reach the media, of course, but in smaller immunological circles we became aware of it. It was contained quickly, fortunately, so you don't need to worry now. I'm just curious.”

“Oh.” Charline pursed her lips and blew out a long breath. “No, actually, I wasn't here then. Hm. I was in northern Australia, camping on the Kimberley Plateau.”

“I see. That explains why you didn't get sick then. How long were you there?”

“Four months, on a whim.” Charline shook her head. “I thought it was more recent than that. 2012, wow. Time goes, yes?”

Delphine agreed that it did and watched Charline walk out the office, never knowing how well timed that four month camping trip had been.


	3. Chapter 3

Stepping from the platform into the main thoroughfare of Gare de l'Est felt like every other European train station Cosima had been in. From the diverse array of languages washing over them to the pigeons underfoot to the chain restaurants selling coffee, noodles, or pizza, it could easily have convinced Cosima that it was actually London or Amsterdam.

“It's cleaner than Frankfurt,” she told Delphine as they waited for a giant clot of tourists to move through the hallway in front of them.

Delphine inclined her head. “Bien sûr.”

“I'm a little disappointed there's not, like, accordion music to greet us. Or will that happen once we've comfortably left the train station behind us?”

“Euh, if you find accordion music, please let me know so I can run away.”

Rather than taking the subway to their hotel, Delphine got them a taxi and pointed out little spots of interest along the way. She bypassed any and all artistic or national landmarks, though.

“I got very drunk there one day,” Delphine said, pointing to one little alleyway that Cosima hadn't even noticed until they'd almost passed it.

“Yeah?” Cosima grinned at the image of a much younger Delphine. “How old were you?”

“Twenty. For a friend's birthday party. Oh, we would study there.” She pointed to another place. “Well, sometimes we only pretended to study.”

“I knew it,” Cosima said. “You're all show.”

“Indeed. Oh, I fell off my bicycle there!”

“Were you drunk then, too?”

Delphine smacked her arm but grinned. “Non! It was raining and I wasn't paying attention. I was texting Anaïs, actually, the friend I'm meeting in a few days.”

Cosima held her hand as the car wove in and out of traffic, and she much as she wanted to look out of the window and take in the architecture, the flowers, the wall art, she couldn't get enough of Delphine's face as Delphine took in her own personal scenery. Delphine's lip parted, and now and then her lower lip slipped between her teeth just before she showed Cosima some other little memory spot. Her eyes were light brown, reflecting an almost golden quality from the air around them.

“They had terrible coffee,” she said, waving to a café overflowing with people.

“Well.” Cosima kissed her knuckles. “Let's never go there, then.”

*

At their hotel, they climbed five flights of stairs to get to room overlooking a narrow street. Two windows let in the warm May breeze and carried the scent of flowers from down below and from the window boxes attached to each window sill. While Delphine used the bathroom, Cosima shed every item of clothing that smelled like the taxi driver's cologne and stood in the window in nothing but her glasses and underwear. Hopefully Delphine wasn't full of shit when she said she knew a good laundromat nearby.

“Enjoying the view?” Delphine's warm naked body pressed up against her back and her breath tickled her ear.

“Eh. It's alright.” She shrugged and turned around. “This one's better.”

Someone else might've seen them kissing, might've seen them topless, might've seen Cosima gasp when Delphine slid her hand all the way down Cosima's ass crack and gently tugged her away from the window.

Whatever.

Delphine lay her on the bed and kissed her sweetly as she slowly but surely drew Cosima over the edge, resisting Cosima's efforts to touch her back until after she came. “You first,” Delphine whispered. “Plenty of time for me later.”

“There better be.” She dug her fingers into Delphine's hair and breathed her in, then came apart in Delphine's arms with her smile against her cheek. She let herself bask in her love and her body for some time, then pushed Delphine over onto her back. “Your turn.”

Delphine lay with both arms above her head, stretched out like a cat in the sunshine. “Mhm.”

Cosima kissed her and then ran two fingers from her lips all the way down to the very top of her inner thigh and then up to circle her clit. She was soaking wet already, so Cosima slipped her fingers inside of her, turning them to make Delphine moan, then she dipped her head down to drink her in, and Delphine came so hard it made both Cosima's shoulder and wrist crack.

She giggled into Delphine's hip. “I think you needed that.”

Delphine made a noise that might've been a word, and Cosima pressed her lips into her stomach. The sexiest thing in the world, right here, in her arms, with her taste on Cosima's lips. She could have cried.

“You know,” she said, “somehow I figured you'd taste different now we're in Paris. Like, your body would shift back to, like, home mode or something.”

Delphine stomach shook with silent laughter under Cosima's face. “Maybe it needs more time. Taste me again in a few days.”

Cosima kissed her again and did her best super-serious French voice. “Oui, Madame.”

* * *

After Delphine fell asleep, Cosima lay awake, her mind drifting against her will, to a night just a few years but a whole lifetime ago.

_  
“I guess we're not gonna make it to Paris in time for summer,” she said, then coughed into a blood-splattered paper towel._

_Delphine rubbed her thumb over Cosima's fingers and for once did not launch an immediate argument. Cosima knew the numbers, and if she knew them, Delphine damn well knew them too. It all fit into what Dr. Nealon referred to as “Stage 4” of the disease. He'd based those stages on the progression in only one patient, but when all the patients shared a precise genetic make-up, it made sense to follow it. At Stage 4, Cosima had a few more months before Delphine would be performing autopsy. Maybe Scott would assist._

_Delphine rested Cosima's hand against her cheek, warming her fingers. Then the fucking drip monitor started beeping again. Delphine pressed the call button, a nurse came in, nodded to Delphine, and replaced the bag. The relative silence was a balm._

_At least nothing would beep anymore after she died. Hopefully._

_Delphine shook her head and squeezed Cosima's hand. “No, we will go to Paris,” she said, and smiled._

_Cosima tried not to roll her eyes. “What, like, tomorrow? Gonna be kinda hard with this shit.” She flicked at the nasal canula and the IV._

_“Mmmm, probably not tomorrow, but one day.”_

_Cosima closed her eyes and rolled her head to the side. “Delphine, please...”_

_“I'm serious. Do you want to hear about it?”_

_What she wanted was a big enough hit to make her forget what planet she was even on, to forget that she was nothing more than a body on a table to anyone in this building, to forget that she was going to die slowly and painfully. She opened her eyes again and found Delphine's beautiful eyes looking at her, the way no one else here looked at her, like she was more than just a scientifically interesting future corpse._

_She took a deep shuddering breath, did not cough, and shrugged. “Yeah, let's hear it. Tell me about Paris.”_

_So Delphine did. She talked about everything they would do once they got there, in summer of course, when the flowers bloomed and the trees hung heavy with leaves over the boulevards._

_“We'll walk along la Seine,” she said, kissing Cosima's fingers. “I'll hold your hand and point out every interesting little thing we see. We'll have a picnic sur les quais with food from the best pâtisseries and markets in the city. I'll go out and buy it for you so you can sleep in as late as you want, and you'll need to since we'll spend all night making love in every possible way.”_

_On and on she talked, about the hotel they'd stay in with white curtains fluttering in the summer breeze, and the little dogs they'd see at the cafés and parks, and the old women doing aerobics in the park along the boulevard. She talked about the tourists they'd see doing all the wrong things, and about the little hidden streets and alleyways where Delphine could find the best shops and bars and restaurants, but also the pâtisseries where everyone went because they were big and well known, and Delphine liked them anyways because that one really did have the best eclairs if you were willing to wait in line behind twenty tourists holding outdated “What to see in Paris” books. She talked for so long and in such great detail that Cosima could almost imagine being there, instead of in this little windowless room._

_“You really wanna go there with me?” Cosima asked._

_“Of course I do. Why wouldn't I?”_

_“Because I might embarrass you. I might mispronounce some famous French pastry or mix up the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, some shit like that.”_

_Delphine kissed Cosima's thumb. “That would be a challenge, even for you. However, if you did manage that, I would still love you, and I would still take you absolutely everywhere.”  
_

* * *

On Saturday morning, they went to breakfast at the little café near the hotel, but Delphine didn't eat. She tapped her fingers on the table while Cosima ate two croissants, and she kept looking at the map on her phone that showed the restaurant they would go to for lunch. Every few minutes, she asked Cosima a question like, “Do you think I look more mature in a white or a blue blouse?”

“Both,” Cosima said without a thought.

“That's not helpful.”

Finally, Cosima paid the bill and suggested a quick walk around the neighborhood before getting ready for lunch in a few hours, but Delphine looked like she'd suggested they fly back to Canada real quick. “No, we should go back to the room.”

Cosima sighed and took hold of Delphine's arms. “Okay, Delphine, my love? We are having lunch with _your father,_ today. Not, like Marion Cotillard or Adèle Haenel or someone like that. I mean, as far as I know, they’re not gonna be there. Anyways, shouldn't I be the one so nervous I'm not eating anything? Why the anxiety?”

“I was nervous before I met your parents too,” Delphine said.

“Not like this you weren't. You were normal-level nervous because you wanted them to like you, but you knew that I would still love you no matter what happened. Right?”

Finally Delphine smiled, but her the little furrow between her eyebrows remained. “Right.”

“And I'm nervous in that same sort of way right now, yeah?”

“You're nervous?”

“Um, yes. I am nervous about meeting your parents, yes. A healthy level of nervous, though. See, I ate my entire breakfast, which it more than you've done for two days.”

Delphine kissed Cosima's hand and then pulled hers away to tangle up her own hair. “Cosima, it's been over four years. The last time I saw him...” Her speech trailed away and left her lips moving without making a sound. She started walking towards their hotel, and Cosima stayed beside her.

“What happened the last time you saw him? You've never said.”

“He saw the apartment I was staying in with Julian. I was back from my very short-lived employment with X which of course you've read all about.”

 _Oh, that._ The one that could ruin Delphine's career if spun in just the right (or wrong) way. Cosima smiled.

“Papa knew about it, of course. He heard about it from a colleague of his who also worked for the department overseeing these things. He has connections.”

“Well, did he also hear that you backed out before the shit really hit the fan?”

“I told him that, but he didn't care. I got involved in the first place, and stayed involved longer than I should have, and that's what mattered. He was terribly disappointed. Said I'd lost my moral compass, had no sense of right and wrong anymore. That sort of thing. We fought.”

“I see.” Cosima sat back and watched the love of her life tug on her own hair with one hand. The interesting thing was, as striking as the whole story was, it now paled in comparison to everything else done by Dyad and Neolution. “So, you think he's still worked up about that?”

“I have no idea. I don't know what he knows, what he thinks, anything.”

*

For once, Cosima was ready to go way before Delphine was. She would have cracked a joke about it, but poor Delphine already seemed on the verge of spontaneous combustion. So she sat and watched the most beautiful woman on the planet change clothes a thousand times, put her hair up, put her hair down, do her makeup, wash it off, and do her makeup again. She wondered how much time Delphine had taken on her appearance before meeting Cosima for the first time. Probably not this much.

“This might be a stupid question,” Cosima asked, “but is your father super fashion conscious?”

“No, not particularly.”

“Mkay.”

“Why?”

Cosima watched Delphine arrange a silver necklace against her collarbones and fidget with the straps on her dress – the fourth dress she'd worn in the past hour. “Just wondering.”

Delphine looked over. “He's not, but I don't know who he's with. They might be.”

“So you're trying to impress a complete stranger?”

Delphine sighed and Cosima regretted bringing it up. “Cosima, this might be my last chance to have a... a relationship with him, and the opinion of his partner or whoever is a big part of that. Do you understand that?”

“I do.” She got up and wrapped her arms around Delphine's midsection from behind. “I think I do, anyway. I just hate seeing you this worked up.”

Delphine relaxed for a moment in Cosima's arms, and Cosima kissed the side of her neck.

“What were you wearing the last time you saw him?”

“I don't remember. Jeans, maybe.”

Cosima nodded. “You know, I've never met your dad, but I am willing to bet that he doesn't remember what you had on either.”

Delphine leaned her head back against Cosima's forehead. “Probably not,” she agreed. “But I'm certain he remembers what we talked about.”

“Yeah.” She spoke softly, connecting as much of her body with Delphine's. “And today you'll give him a whole new conversation to remember. A better conversation, probably.”

“Maybe.”

“Maybe.”

They held hands on their way to the restaurant, and Delphine hypothesized about what sort of person her father might be bringing to lunch with them. “I assume it's a romantic partner,” she said. “I can't imagine he would bring a business partner or even a close friend.”

“Sounds about right,” Cosima said. She would have agreed with a lot if it calmed Delphine down, and talking while walking seemed to do a little of that.

“It's not my mother.”

“Doesn't seem like it,” Cosima agreed.

“He has a younger brother, but the last time I heard about him, he lived in Tanzania and Papa hated the work he was doing.”

They stopped at a crosswalk a few blocks from the restaurant, and Delphine's tension visibly increased with the lack of movement. Cosima swung their joined hands back and forth. “What kind of work did he do? This uncle of yours.”

“He's a priest. A missionary.”

“I see.”

“Papa hates priests.”

“Good to know. Probably not having lunch with a priest then.” She grinned at Delphine, but Delphine bit her thumb and then practically launched herself into the street once the walk signal came on.

Thanks to Delphine's anxiety, they arrived at the restaurant ten minutes early. As the awning came into view, though, Delphine slowed her steps.

“I should have worn the blue skirt instead,” she said, so softly Cosima almost missed it in the ambient chatter of passing tourists. “It makes me look older.”

Cosima squeezed Delphine's hand. “You look beautiful, and this is not a job interview, remember. Try to breathe one or twice a minute, though, yeah?”

Delphine said nothing to that, but a moment later she whispered, “Oh, putain.”

“What? Don't tell me this is the wrong place.”

“No, it's right. He's here already.”

“Oh?” Cosima craned her neck to look for a sixty-something-year-old man who looked like Delphine, but Delphine tugged her back.

“He's wearing the gray suit. There, standing by the tree.”

A tall slender man in the aforementioned gray suit looked away from the woman he'd been talking to and nodded once in their direction. He matched Delphine for height, but Cosima easily believed everything Delphine said about taking after her mother. Alain Cormier reminded Cosima more of the man who played the rock singer on _Love Actually_ , but classier. Way classier.

“Bonjour, Delphine,” he said, smiling about as much as one might for an upcoming colonoscopy.

Delphine smiled. “Bonjour, Papa.” They kissed each other's cheeks with an air of heavy obligation, and then Delphine stepped back to put a hand on Cosima’s shoulder. “This is my fiancée, Cosima Niehaus. She's from California.” She smiled again, perhaps to apologize for speaking in English, or for Cosima's hairstyle, or both. Cosima imagine she'd give Delphine countless things to apologize for, given enough time.

“Ah.” Monsieur Cormier managed a small smile for Cosima and shook her hand. “It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Niehaus.” His accent was far heavier than Delphine's, and he produced the sentence with the same practiced cadence as non-native speakers around the world.

Cosima grinned so much her cheeks hurt. “It's a pleasure to meet you too! Delphine's told me a lot about you.”

“She has?” He turned to Delphine with the same small smile lingering on his almost non-existent lips. “Interesting. And this is Félicia Vuagnoux, my partner since two years.”

Félicia was a smartly dressed woman with laugh lines around her eyes and the sort of short hair cut that straight European women wore more comfortably than their American counterparts. She grinned and greeted Cosima and Delphine with a handshake, sans kissing. She complimented Cosima's hair and Delphine's necklace and then the hostess told them that their table was ready, so they all followed her back into the cool interior of the restaurant to sit at a large table near the back. Cosima wanted to steal a few seconds with Delphine to gauge her reaction to Félicia, but the woman in question commandeered Cosima's attention.

“Is this your first time in Paris?” she asked. Her accent blended Received Pronunciation and either Australian or New Zealand English, with dropped r's and slightly nasal vowels.

“Yes, it is, but Delphine's been a pretty good tour guide so far.”

“I bet she has! What have you seen so far? When did you get in, by the way?”

“Two days ago, but we got in at night, so this is really our second day here. And we've mostly been walking around, looking at Delphine's old neighborhood, you know. Eating a lot of good food, too, of course.”

While Félicia smiled and asked about their flight, their hotel, and their plans for their stay, Delphine and her father sat quietly, eyeing each other from across the table. Delphine kept her wrists on the edge of the table and her fingers still, but Cosima knew she was fidgeting inside, so she stretched her foot over to rub Delphine's shin. Monsieur Cormier, on the other hand, rested his elbows on the table and held the tiniest fork between his hands.

Cosima cleared her throat. “So, um, Monsieur Cormier, Delphine tells me that you're an economist.”

Fuck. Five minutes into their lunch, and she couldn't avoid saying “um.” _Way to sound well-educated, Niehaus._

He nodded. “I am, and call me Alain please.”

She smiled. “Sure thing.” At least Alain rolled off the tongue better than Monsieur Cormier.

Alain failed to expand on that statement, but Félicia stepped in again to fill the conversation gap, turning to Delphine with such enthusiasm that Cosima couldn't help but wonder how much was an attempt to cover for Alain's lack of any visible emotion whatsoever. “I understand you're a doctor, Delphine.”

“Yes, I studied immunology, although I'm more of a general physician now. I've done a number of different things recently.”

“Oh? Well, do tell! Start from the start, if you don't mind.”

So Delphine did, giving an overview of her medical experience that managed to sound more like half of a job interview than the actual interesting career she'd had thus far.

And if Cosima thought that Delphine's father's emails were sparse, they were nothing compared to his conversation. Even for topics he should have known about, like Delphine's medical school attendance and completion, Alain said nothing. Nor did he comment on their current work curing women around the world, although Félicia leaned forward with her chin on her fist.

The waiter came to briefly lift the conversational pressure and remind everyone that they had come to eat, at least officially. Fortunately, Cosima and Delphine looked over the menu that morning (with several minutes of wincing from Cosima at the thought of baby chicks served roasted with tarragon), so Cosima could pretend that she understood everything on it and ordered the sea bass without hesitation. She would have ordered one of the salads, perhaps the mushroom salad, which was in the €20 range, but Delphine advised her to order something in the middle range of prices, so sea bass it was.

“And what do you do, Cosima?” Félicia asked once the waiter left with their orders. “May I call you Cosima then?”

“Oh yeah, of course! I'm working on my doctorate in evolutionary biology right now.”

“Oh how fascinating!” Félicia leaned forward. “I don't know much about that field. What do you do? What kinds of things do you study?”

That question again, the one whose answer needed to fit the educational background of the asker, who wouldn't reveal that background until Cosima provided either far too much or too little detail.

“Well,” Cosima began, “my dissertation topic is the epigentics of clone cells.”

“Clones!” Félicia's face lit up. “How fascinating!”

Alain pointed his tiny fork at her, still stony-faced, and spoke. “She will ask you a lot of questions,” he told Cosima. “I hope that you come prepared.”

Finally Delphine cracked a little smile of her own and looked over to Cosima. “I think she can handle it.”

“I have no doubt,” Félicia said, “but to start, what is epigen... I'm sorry, what did you say you studied again?”

“Epigentics.” She slowly laid out the basics of the field, of her dissertation topic, of the reasons she gave most people for her interest in the topic, and the challenges of working on it while traveling so much. Eventually, much later than it took most people, Félicia's eyes glazed over, and they both agreed it was time to change the subject.

The conversation quickly steered into their reason for being in Paris, and for traveling so many places, and even after their food arrived (as artfully presented as one would expect for €40 - €60 dish) Félicia peppered them with questions and comments. Her curiosity spread equally over Cosima's and Delphine, though with Delphine she occasionally chuckled and said something like, “Oh, yes, Alain mentioned that you were interested in that.”

Comments like that always made Delphine blush and stop talking for a bit, especially when her father did nothing more than give one of his almost smiles. Whenever that happened Cosima would pick up the slack and navigate into a different topic, like their life in Toronto, or asking Félicia what she did for a living.

“I write for _Le Monde_ ,” she said, “primarily. I cover politics, mostly here in France but sometimes internationally as well.”

Whatever Cosima thought Félicia might do, international political journalist wasn't it. Beside her, Delphine's eyes widened.

“Be careful,” Alain said, “maybe you will read the journal tomorrow and find a story about yourselves.”

Félicia laughed and squeezed his arm, and Cosima put a fourth tick mark in her mental column of “sentences Delphine's father has said.” Christ, if he'd been this way the last time Delphine talked with him, no wonder she was so nervous about meeting him today. Cosima almost would have preferred him to cuss her out than this prolonged silent treatment, which felt more and more amplified by his chatty partner.

All the food, followed by a dessert of crème brûlée and fresh berries, seemed to weigh Félicia down enough that spoke less, and finally leaned back in her chair waving a hand at her plate. “Take it away,” she said, “before I can no longer fit in my clothes!”

To Cosima's right, Delphine's face did something interesting in response to that comment, but neither she nor Alain replied. Rather, Alain also lay his spoon down and turned to Cosima. “Did you enjoy your meal?” he asked with a similar formality as earlier. Five sentences, then. Perhaps in a whole day he might get up to ten.

She put her grin back. “Yes, thank you, it was delicious!”

“Good. And you study clones.”

His flat affect made the sentence sound like an accusation, utterly unconnected with the question about her food, but she still searched for a logical transition she might've missed. “Um, well, I study clone cells.”

“Why?”

 _Because I am a clone,_ sat on the tip of her tongue. “Well, the science of cloning has the potential to yield permanent treatments for countless diseases and disorders,” she said instead.

“Treatments how?”

He laced his fingers together on the table in front of him and Cosima felt her face burning. Félicia patted his arm. “Come now, Alain, she's only just arrived, and she's full of delicious food. Perhaps let her digest first, and then do the interrogation later, hm?”

“No, no, it's okay,” Cosima said as Delphine's hand slid around her shoulders in a silent show of support. Cosima cleared her throat again to buy a few seconds. “Well, for example, if we can clone your liver, then if you ever need a new liver, a perfect fit is already waiting for you. You wouldn't have to wait on a transplant list or find a living donor who's a suitable match, and you wouldn't need to spend the rest of your life on immunosuppressants, because it would be _your_ liver.”

“I see. You can do this for all parts of the body?”

“Uh, no. Not yet. But one day, maybe. That's kinda the goal.”

“When you do that,” Alain said, his face the same mask of seriousness, “you will end death.”

Cosima chuckled uneasily. “We will be able to help some people live a lot longer, and improve their quality of life. That's what all of us in the biological sciences should be doing.”

“If you clone humans,” Félicia said, “that would really be something huge. You would be famous.”

Delphine and Cosima shared a smile, and Cosima looked down at her empty custard cup. “Yeah. But um, I'm really not interested in going that far.”

“Why not?” Alain asked. “A step for making perfect humans, no? Cloning plus genetic engineering.”

Delphine stiffened, Félicia cocked her head, and Cosima was never more grateful for a waitress interrupting with the check. Alain took it, refused Delphine's weak attempt to pay, and Cosima threw together some semblance of an answer to Alain's question.

“There's no such thing as perfect humans,” she said, remembering a cold night a few years ago when Evie Cho brought up the same topic. “And, in my opinion, there's not even really such a thing as perfection. It doesn't exist. Like, I mean, Delphine is wonderful.” She put a hand on Delphine's arm. “But she's not perfect, and I'm even less perfect than she is, but apparently she's okay with that.”

“I am very okay with that,” Delphine said softly.

“So, shooting for perfection is shooting at a constantly moving target that doesn't even really exist. We can make people's lives better. That's it, and that's frankly a pretty good goal.”

Delphine nodded beside her and squeezed her hand. Alain might have nodded, or perhaps he just moved his head to look at something interesting. Cosima's couldn't tell.

“Hear hear,” Félicia said. “You know, as you say that, I'm reminded of how organizations are pushing for more diverse hiring, and other people are pushing back, saying that we should hire the _best_ person for the job, without thinking that...”

She went on, but Cosima's attention stayed on Delphine, who still gripped her hand so hard her knuckles turned white. Only when everyone stood up and left the restaurant did Delphine release her hand and take a deep visible breath.

“Are you okay?” Cosima whispered.

“I'm fine.”

They lingered outside of the restaurant for a few minutes discussing plans.

“Of course you'll want the rest of the day to yourselves,” Félicia said, “but do come for a visit tomorrow. If you'd like, of course. We can do Sunday brunch at our house, much more casual.”

“Your house?” Delphine asked.

“Yes, it's close by. Just down that way a bit.” Félicia waved her hand in a general southerly direction, and Delphine nodded, her earlier anxious expression replaced by a look of almost sadness.

“The same part of town you used to live in,” Alain said. “Close to it, anyway.”

“We'll send you the address,” Félicia promised. “We would love to see you again while you're in town. Alain does wonderful eggs, but I'm sure that's old news to you.”

Delphine shook her head and looked at her father with wide eyes. “No, actually. You cook?”

“I do cook,” was all he said.

* * *

Rather than returning to the hotel, Delphine led Cosima on a meandering walk through the neighborhoods south of the Seine. For a block or so, Cosima followed her silent lead, watching the back or side of Delphine's head, the way she held her shoulders, and particular manner of her steps. Eventually, as they passed a Holiday Inn trying to blend in with the cafés and boulangeries, Cosima spoke up.

“I think that went pretty well, actually. What do you think?”

Delphine shook her head. “I don't know what to think. Apparently my father now knows how to cook eggs.”

“Is that a shock?”

“Yes! He could scarcely boil water when I was a child. And... and he lives in a house with a journalist who can hold pleasant conversation with strangers for an extended period of time. What else has he been up to?”

“He was super interested in the cloning thing, that's for sure.”

Delphine blew out a long breath and shook her head. “Don't let that worry you. All of your answers today were perfect.”

“Perfect?” Cosima arched an eyebrow. “Really? Were you listening to my answer?”

Delphine swatted Cosima's ass and turned left down Rue Serpente, which was much less serpentine than Cosima wanted it to be. The narrow street seemed to calm Delphine a little bit though, as though the grayish white buildings pressing in from the sides functioned like a warm compress on one's eyes at night. Her steps slowed. When they reached the next cross street, she paused and looked up at a vertical black sign reading _cinema._ “I used to go there a lot,” she said.

“Yeah?” Cosima wrapped an arm around Delphine's waist. “I never thought of you as a movie buff. Did you see anything special there?”

“Not really. Whatever was showing when I wanted to go. It was an escape, nothing more. I saw _Rio_ twice, though. You know, the cartoon movie with that blue parrot?”

“That's adorable. Were you by yourself?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

* * *

Alain and Félicia's three-story row house sat in a quiet neighborhood with elm and black locust trees filtering the morning sunlight. After several minutes of texting the evening before, during which Cosima held Delphine's hand to keep her anxiety at bay, it was agreed to meet here at ten. Félicia insisted on a relaxed day of chatting and sipping wine, so Cosima and Delphine brought a bottle each – one red and one white, to hedge their bets. Well, Delphine's bets. Cosima was along for the ride, wondering what the hell it would take to make Delphine feel better and trying not to wonder how much this little piece of real estate cost.

Félicia greeted them in a baggy t-shirt and jeans, and led them into the house where two cocker spaniels acted like they'd never seen people before.

Brunch was indeed good, and Alain's demeanor remained the same as it had been the day before. As a fellow world traveler, Félicia's questions today revolved around Cosima and Delphine's travels. She sympathized with Cosima's troubles in Israel and pumped Delphine for information and stories about her travels to the Middle East, Turkey, and Iran. She seem a little disappointed that Delphine hadn't interacted more with political issues in any of the country's she'd been to.

“But the people you spoke with in Turkey,” Félicia asked, “what do they think of Erdogan?”

“I never asked,” Delphine said. “I was there to treat women with this rare genetic condition. Getting involved in politics does nothing more than complicate the treatment process. It's almost always better if no one knows how I feel about any issue at all. That is true whether I think the issue is small or large, and even if I think my patient's views might be terrible. I never get involved.”

Delphine faced Félicia, but behind her Alain nodded as he washed up the brunch dishes. Cosima thought he might add his own two cents finally, but he said nothing.

After eating, they migrated upstairs to look at some of the things Félicia brought back from her varied travels. She had sculptures from Cameroon, textiles from Sri Lanka, and a papyrus map of Egypt given to her by an Egyptian journalist. Cosima pretended to be impressed and didn't tell her that, had Félicia wandered about Alexandria or Cairo a bit more, she would have seen thousands of these maps in every tourist stall everywhere.

When she turned to mention that to Delphine, Delphine was gone.

“Oh, they stepped outside,” Félicia said. “They're on the balcony just over there.”

Sure enough, Delphine and her father stood side by side looking out over the little park behind the house, their arms resting in identical poses on the balcony railing.

“It's good, I think,” Félicia said softly. “They need some time to talk.”

“Yeah...” She also knew that whatever they were talking about, and however it went, she would catch Delphine and her emotions in the aftermath.

“And also,” Félicia said, lowering her voice a notch, “they can speak French together, you know. Alain is quite self-conscious about his English. I don't know if you've noticed.”

“Oh, is that what it is?” Cosima asked before she could catch herself. At least she hadn't said, “Oh, so that's his problem.” Thankfully, Félicia laughed.

“Well, to be honest he's quite shy in French, too, but in English he's even worse. I was quite surprised when he started talking to you yesterday and asking you all those questions, but truly he also doesn't care much for geneticists in general.”

“Yeah, I kinda got that impression.”

Félicia patted her shoulder. “Don't worry about it. He reads articles, you know, and of course the only people in the articles are the ones doing terrible things like aborting babies because they will have learning disabilities or growing miracle rice that provides all of one's nutritional needs but also causes cancer, that sort of thing.”

Cosima nodded. “Well, I mean, there are serious ethical considerations once you start playing with the human genome, no question about it.”

“Of course. Do you like music, by the way? We usually listen to music during the day, and Alain's become quite the collector of these records recently.”

Cosima bent down to flip through the dozens of vinyl records in a holder beside the player. She got the feeling that Alain Cormier had not been a vinyl record enthusiast during Delphine's childhood any more than he'd been a cook. What had changed so much in his life that the man Cosima was meeting now shocked the child he'd help to raise? She selected a Chavela Vargas record and ran her fingertips over the cover art. “Somehow I didn't peg him as this kind of music lover,” she said.

Félicia chuckled. “Oh, that's for me, actually. He bought it for my birthday last year. I've been in love with Chavela Vargas for ages. Here.” She took the record and placed it on the turn table. When the music started, she closed her eyes for a moment and swayed back and forth, and Cosima followed suit. The music took Cosima back to hot evenings in Mexico, to taking Delphine in her arms and asking her five, six, seven more times if she really did want to marry her, and Delphine laughing and kissing her with chili pepper flavored lips until she couldn't speak anymore.

“You like it?” Félicia asked.

“Oh yeah. Turn it up.”

Félicia did so. “Please make yourself at home, Cosima. I will bring us some more wine.”

*

Delphine and her father stayed out on the balcony for more than an hour, during which time Cosima and Félicia finished a bottle of red wine and congratulated each other on solving both the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and also the entire US election system.

“They should all listen to you!” Félicia cried, raising her glass to Cosima from her chair near the record player. “No electoral college, everyone is registered to vote automatically, and no more of this, this...” She waved a hand around. “What did you call it? The post office? No.”

“First past the post,” Cosima said. She'd had rather less wine than Félicia had, but her head still buzzed pleasantly and she giggled at Félicia's gradually worsening English. She knew next to nothing about Alain Cormier's earlier romantic partners, but she hoped like hell that he kept this one.

“Exactly,” Félicia said. “Some European countries have many, euh, rounds of voting as well, you know.”

“I've heard, yeah.” Seizing on an opportunity to hear another tipsy rant, she said, “So give me some dirt on French politics. I mean, honestly, like, we're not gonna – ” Her sentence fell off when Delphine slipped into the room through the sliding glass door, her father a few feet behind her. “Hey, babe, you alright?”

“You two certainly are getting to know each other,” Delphine remarked with a trace of forced levity in her voice.

“Oh yes,” Félicia said. “She's wonderful, Delphine. You choose very well!”

Delphine smiled, but her eyes were red and swollen. Cosima set down her wine glass and put her hands on Delphine's face. “You okay?” she whispered.

“Yes.” Delphine kissed her softly. “I'll tell you more later, okay?”

“Okay.”

Alain said nothing, but padded silently upstairs to the third floor, where the sound of a door closing sounded in the break between songs. Félicia frowned up in the direction he'd gone in, then shook her head and launched into a lengthy monologue to answer Cosima's question, which Cosima no longer gave a single shit about. Emmanuel Macron could be the second coming of Jesus Christ, or he could make Donald Trump look like Gandhi. It really didn't matter, but Cosima tuned her out. Delphine had been crying, was now obviously exhausted, and Cosima apparently would not know why until they left this house.

Slowly, after Félicia wound down her monologue and got Delphine a tall glass of water, Delphine's energy level lifted, her face relaxed a bit, and she stopped leaning her head on Cosima's shoulder. The three of them drifted down into the dining room, where Félicia laid out a spread of cheese, fruit, meats, and various condiments. The conversation stayed firmly in the culinary realm, comparing and contrasting various hot sauces, mustards, stinky cheeses, and the endless list of sauces ending with _-aise_.

Close to three o'clock, Alain emerged from the top floor with a manila envelope under one arm. He wore a thin gray sweater now, and his hair was damp like he'd taken a shower. He nodded a greeting to everyone, popped a piece of blue cheese in his mouth, and dropped the envelope on the table beside Cosima's plate.

“You might like some of those,” he said.

“Oh?” Cosima pushed her plate out of the way and opened the envelope. It was full of photographs, taken sometime in the eighties or early nineties judging by the photo quality and hairstyles. She shook them out of the envelope and gingerly set the stack in front of her.

“Oh, putain!” Delphine laughed, covering her mouth.

Right on the top of the stack was a picture of a child wearing an oversized beekeeping suit, holding up a tray covered in bees. Cosima gasped. “Oh my god, Delphine, is that you?”

Alain answered for her, since Delphine was too busy making little groaning noises and covering her face with both hands. “Yes,” he said, with what Cosima was slowly learning to recognize as his biggest smile. “She was five years old in that photo.”

“Why do you still have that?” Delphine exclaimed.

Alain didn't answer, but sipped the cup of tea that Félicia brought him. Félicia gasped too when she saw the photos, and then squealed, and scooted her chair closer for a better look. Delphine got up and walked away, in the same way she'd done back in Mexico last year when Julian started talking her ex, except this time she was smiling in her embarrassment, not scowling or asking anyone to stop.

“You know,” Cosima remarked, “somehow I assumed you would see all of my baby pictures way before I saw yours. I'm so, so happy it's the other way around. You were adorable. Still are, but, you know, in a totally different way.”

Delphine blew her a kiss, and Cosima flipped to the next photo: A much younger Alain Cormier crouching near his daughter, sans bee suit this time, but facing a bee hive behind a glass pane. Little Delphine was absorbed in the insects in front of her, both hands planted on the glass, her hair floating up in all directions like it still did in the morning if she slept with wet hair. Alain had his hand on her waist and pointed to something inside the hive. He was smiling here, a real human smile that shocked Cosima even more than the sight of her beloved Delphine as a little girl.

 _What the fuck happened to him in the last twenty-five years?_ Cosima wondered.

“Who took these?” Cosima asked. Probably not Delphine's mother – her parents split before this point.

“My father,” Alain said. “He had a lot of bees. Delphine loved them, as you see. It was her favorite part of visiting my parents. She talked about the bees for weeks.”

The other pictures in the stack followed a similar theme – Delphine prodding an anthill on the ground with a stick, Delphine at a science museum with a giant plastic beetle, smiling in a such a familiar way that it was disconcerting to see on a young child. It was hard to imagine Delphine as a little girl like this, who needed someone to brush her hair or wipe her nose for her. Who could lose herself looking at a swarm of bees.

“You were such a little entomologist,” Cosima remarked when she looked at the fifth photo – little Delphine holding out her hand with a large striped caterpillar on it.

“I was,” Delphine acknowledged. “I loved everything creepy and crawly. Maman was always horrified.”

“Why didn't you study it, then?” Félicia asked. “We can use more bee scientists, as well, you know.”

“I did take a class in college,” Delphine said. “But I wanted more money, more career opportunities.”

“More excitement?” Cosima suggested. “Better looking lab partners?”

“Yes, that's exactly it.” Delphine winked at her and went to get some more tea for herself. When she returned, she said, “the entomology students could be a little bit much at times, too. I mean, now I could see various social disorders among them, but I didn't have so much patience or understanding when I was twenty.”

“Oh, who does,” Félicia said. “You could always go back to it. If you get tired of medicine, I mean.”

Delphine nodded. “I stayed close, in a way. Host - parasite relationships overlap heavily with entomology.”

Cosima flipped to another photo of Delphine, this time much younger, sucking on three of her own fingers, her brown eyes even larger in her toddler face. “Yeah, you have all those cool parasitic wasps and ant-infecting fungi to look at it. Not to mention the occasional robot maggot.” She grinned up at Delphine, who plopped herself back down beside her and kissed her cheek.

“Precisely. Although the robot maggots fall more in your wheelhouse, I believe.”

“Robot maggots?” Félicia cried.

Delphine shook her head and waved a hand. “They're not real, don't worry. Just a few of our colleagues back in Toronto were sort of experimenting with them.”

“Inside joke, kinda,” Cosima agreed.

Going through the rest of the pictures in the envelope, Delphine commented now and then on something she remembered, like her grandfather's dog (“He always licked my mouth, every time”), her father's desk (“It always smelled like erasers”), or a particular church dress (“It itched”). All in all, the photos covered Delphine's first seven or eight years, and painted the picture of a happy little science-oriented girl and her adoring, indulgent father. There was nothing to suggest a relationship in which a four year gap in communication would strike either as acceptable.

“Are there more?” Cosima asked once they'd finished the envelope.

Alain shook his head. “I don't have many photos after that, of her.”

“You have the one on your desk,” Félicia said, “upstairs.”

“As I said, I don't have many photos.”

Delphine leaned towards him. “You have a picture of me on your desk?”

He shrugged. “I'll show you.” He stood and went back upstairs, and Delphine watched him go with her mouth partly open.

“Are you surprised?” Félicia asked.

“Yes, actually,” Delphine said, and her voice cracked a little.

In a minute, Alain returned holding a small metal picture frame that he handed to Delphine. The photo in the frame showed them both, but in this photograph Delphine matched Alain's height and she wore the sort of dress that she might wear today to any fancy reception. She smiled her professional smile and clasped her hands in front of her while Alain held his behind his back. They did not touch, and Alain did not smile.

“When was this?” Cosima asked.

“Medical school graduation,” Delphine said, her voice still thick. “I remember... you didn't want your picture taken at all.”

He chuckled. “I never want it.”

“Who took it?” Cosima asked.

“One of my professors,” Delphine said. “He sent a copy to me, but I didn't know he'd sent one to you too.”

“Not immediately,” Alain said. “He saw me a few months later and offered to send it. I was happy to have it. I am still happy to have it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to FrenchClone for checking this one over for me and offering a few clever suggestions.


End file.
